Mine your mind II: Dreams
This was (almost) exactly what I saw...
As well as I can recall...
I stood on some sort of dock or warf overlooking the sea in a dream. A pod of whales simultaneously surfaced and shot sky high jets of flame from their blow holes! I turned toward the elderly woman beside me "are you seeing this?!". She slowly shook her head no. I suddenly realized that I was also not seeing this. In fact I was dreaming, the scene had been generated there in my mind, concealed from the world. I lept from the dock and began to fly. I hadn't ascended more than 1000 feet when I realized I had forgotten my car keys on the dock. I made a quick u-turn.
My eyes opened.
I could still smell the flames. I was excited to have made the realization that I was dreaming, but pretty disappointed it hadn't lasted longer.
I was in the middle of an experiment.
My goal was to experience the maximum number of visually amazing events in my dreams. How?
Lucid dreaming. Lucid dreams are ones where you are aware that you are dreaming while you sleep. Aditionally, you should be able to control the outcome of the dream to a degree. This particular lucid dream had generated a worthwhile image before I actually became aware that I was dreaming. But, I was seeking something more specific. If I could consistently realize that I was dreaming while I slept, I might stand a chance of actually opening a "mystery door".
Here is the theory.
If you, in a dream, were to create a door, you should be able to choose what was on the other side too. My goal was to say "On the other side I will see something I haven't ever seen before." then to open the door...
Thus tapping into the unbridled creativity of my subconscious mind.
It actually worked one time.
The door was about the size of a cabinet, I found it behind some trees in a kind of tunnel with greenish water damaged dry wall (or something vaguely like that). I said "something I haven't ever seen before is on the other side!" and expectantly yanked open the door. My new amazing image? It was a cabinet full of white porcelain plates, saucers, cups, and bowls... they were all melting like wax in a warm stove.
I was kind of disappointed.
Yes, I was excited that I had accomplished the feat of controlling my dream so precisely! But, I hadn't anticipated that the scene on the other side of a mystery door would be "only ok". Actually that is the issue with dreaming for profit. A majority of dreams are stupid. So often I have woken up and rattled off fifteen minutes of dreams to my wife only to realize that most of it was boring to her. I realized that the stuff on the other side of mystery doors was no more "tapped into the subconscious mind" than normal dreams were.
The experiment continued.
Like any normal human being, I was never able to controll my lucid dreams so well that I kept opening mystery doors night after night. It is an impractical way to acquire new ideas for most folks.
Fire breathing whales (above) was an amazing image from a normal dream, . So, why had I felt the need to seek "mystery doors"? And, speaking of whales...
Do you know how a whale eats his dinner?
Whales strain out krill from seawater with their baleen. That is what I endeavored to do with my dreams. Record hundreds of them. Then, strain out the weak ones, and exploit the wonderful ones.
You need baleen.
You can't always be your own filter, most of our dreams seem wonderful to us. Maybe you have had the experience of listening to boyfriend or coworker describe some long boring dream. You should know that they can be kind of slow. I have asked my wife at times whether she thought a dream image was worth anything. Sometimes an amazing moment of surreal wonder really does come across as you tell your dream out loud... that's the valuable bit.
If your remembering dreams and have a stash of 20 or so, run them by a friend and highlight the good parts!
Try this shortcut to gathering hundreds of fascinating images. Hint: You will need a friend to help you.
The formula for recording 100 dream images in ONE WEEK.